Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The biggest problem with react.js – knowing what is fresh.

Currently coming up to speed with react.jsComing up to speed involves reading vast numbers of comment threads, StackOverflow question threads, the official documentation and blog posts from any number of authors.react.js and its ecosystem are rapidly evolving. Thinking changes, API's change, related projects change, approaches to solving problems change, build systems changes, everything changes extremely rapidly. For goodness sake the JavaScript language changes.The rapid pace of change is a good thing because the outcomes of change are usually better functionality or greater simplification. So you want to be working to the latest version of everything if you like to write simpler and more functional code.BUT there is a HUGE problem. How the heck to know if what you are reading is outdated thinking or latest thinking? There is no way to know how near or far a given blog post or problem thread is from the cutting edge.It's a huge problem because doing something "the old way" can send you down the wrong path for hours or days or worse. You almost always want to be doing things "the new way".Any given page that you read might give you that answer to your current question or problem. But there's no easy way to know if a better way hasn't already been worked out by someone else. It's a real problem. I have no idea how to solve that problem. Do you?